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The limited-time TIME TRAVEL STORY BUNDLE is officially on sale for one more week. A lot of you have already bought it, which is great–I hope you’re enjoying the books in there as much as I am! I’ve already ripped through 3, and have 9 more to go (I can skip Parallelogram (Book 1: Into the Parallel) since I wrote it myself and consequently have read it more than anyone else in the world. So far). I love reading about time travel, and these books are such a treat for my brain. I hope you’re all treating your brains to this fabulous book bundle, too.
If so, then are you ready for one more free thing?
This one isn’t a high-stakes giveaway like the last two I’ve done, it’s a straight bonus offering for the first 20 people who respond.
So whether you’ve already purchased the Time Travel Story Bundle, or are about to go do it right now, the only thing that matters is being one of the first 20 people to send me an email here with two pieces of confirming information: the email address you used when you made the purchase, and the download link you received once the purchase was complete. That’s it! Then if you’re one of the first 20 people who qualifies, I’ll send you everything you need to get the free audio book.
Why am I doing this? Because I know you’re going to love the books in the story bundle, and I also take a gleeful kind of pleasure in giving away free stuff. I have a plan to do that every month for the rest of this year, so make sure you’re part of my Readers’ Group mailing list so you always hear about it first!
Good luck! Can’t wait to give 20 of you some audio swag!
0 Comments on One Last Time Travel Giveaway! as of 1/1/1900
For those of you who like to read your series in one big chunk, there’s now an omnibus ebook edition of the entire PARALLELOGRAM series–and it’s incredibly cheap for the moment. All four books for only $7.99! And more important, no waiting in between cliff hangers.
Enjoy!
0 Comments on PARALLELOGRAM Omnibus Edition Now Available! as of 3/4/2015 9:41:00 AM
And the prices for the first 3 installments will still stay nice and low until next week, so if you haven’t read Parallelogram 1, 2, or 3 yet, you can scoop them up at a bargain!
0 Comments on Because Waiting Is So Boring as of 1/17/2015 8:23:00 AM
Parallel universes. Time travel. And a race for teen amateur physicist Audie Masters to save her own life before it’s too late.
Enjoy the exciting, mind-bending conclusion to the PARALLELOGRAM series.
You’ll never look at your own life the same way again.
I am BEYOND ecstatic to be able to tell you that PARALLELOGRAM (Book 4: BEYOND THE PARALLEL) will be coming out January 20, 2015, and is available right now for pre-order! Yes! Finally!
This final book in the series took me a long, long time to write (as those of you who have been waiting for it can attest), but you’ll understand why once you read it. It’s full of adventure, mystery, love, some very cool science, and the return of what I hope are some of your favorite characters.
In celebration of the final book coming out, each of the first three books in the series will be a mere $2.99, and the new book will be only $4.99–but only until January 20. After that, all of them return to their regular prices.
So if you haven’t read the first three books in the series yet, now’s your chance. I’m your book nerd friend who’s saying, “Come on! Come on! Catch up so we can discuss it!”
Can’t wait to hear what you all think. I truly wrote this series for YOU!
You can pre-order Book 4 from: Kindle
Nook
iTunes
Kobo
Thanks for being my readers! Hope you love the book!
0 Comments on Parallelogram 4 Now Available for Pre-Order! as of 1/5/2015 4:59:00 AM
The aim of physics is to understand the world we live in. Given its myriad of objects and phenomena, understanding means to see connections and relations between what may seem unrelated and very different. Thus, a falling apple and the Moon in its orbit around the Earth. In this way, many things “fall into place” in terms of a few basic ideas, principles (laws of physics) and patterns.
As with many an intellectual activity, recognizing patterns and analogies, and metaphorical thinking are essential also in physics. James Clerk Maxwell, one of the greatest physicists, put it thus: “In a pun, two truths lie hid under one expression. In an analogy, one truth is discovered under two expressions.”
Indeed, physics employs many metaphors, from a pendulum’s swing and a coin’s two-sidedness, examples already familiar in everyday language, to some new to itself. Even the familiar ones acquire additional richness through the many physical systems to which they are applied. In this, physics uses the language of mathematics, itself a study of patterns, but with a rigor and logic not present in everyday languages and a universality that stretches across lands and peoples.
Rigor is essential because analogies can also mislead, be false or fruitless. In physics, there is an essential tension between the analogies and patterns we draw, which we must, and subjecting them to rigorous tests. The rigor of mathematics is invaluable but, more importantly, we must look to Nature as the final arbiter of truth. Our conclusions need to fit observation and experiment. Physics is ultimately an experimental subject.
Physics is not just mathematics, leave alone as some would have it, that the natural world itself is nothing but mathematics. Indeed, five centuries of physics are replete with instances of the same mathematics describing a variety of different physical phenomena. Electromagnetic and sound waves share much in common but are not the same thing, indeed are fundamentally different in many respects. Nor are quantum wave solutions of the Schroedinger equation the same even if both involve the same Laplacian operator.
Advanced Theoretical Physics by Marvin (PA). CC-BY-NC-2.0 via mscolly Flickr.
Along with seeing connections between seemingly different phenomena, physics sees the same thing from different points of view. Already true in classical physics, quantum physics made it even more so. For Newton, or in the later Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulations that physicists use, positions and velocities (or momenta) of the particles involved are given at some initial instant and the aim of physics is to describe the state at a later instant. But, with quantum physics (the uncertainty principle) forbidding simultaneous specification of position and momentum, the very meaning of the state of a physical system had to change. A choice has to be made to describe the state either in terms of positions or momenta.
Physicists use the word “representation” to describe these alternatives that are like languages in everyday parlance. Just as with languages, where one needs some language (with all equivalent) not only to communicate with others but even in one’s own thinking, so also in physics. One can use the “position representation” or the “momentum representation” (or even some other), each capable of giving a complete description of the physical system. The underlying reality itself, and most physicists believe that there is one, lies in none of these representations, indeed residing in a complex space in the mathematical sense of complex versus real numbers. The state of a system in quantum physics is in such a complex “wave function”, which can be thought of either in position or momentum space.
Either way, the wave function is not directly accessible to us. We have no wave function meters. Since, by definition, anything that is observed by our experimental apparatus and readings on real dials, is real, these outcomes access the underlying reality in what we call the “classical limit”. In particular, the step into real quantities involves a squared modulus of the complex wave functions, many of the phases of these complex functions getting averaged (blurred) out. Many so-called mysteries of quantum physics can be laid at this door. It is as if a literary text in its ur-language is inaccessible, available to us only in one or another translation.
What we understand by a particle such as an electron, defined as a certain lump of mass, charge, and spin angular momentum and recognized as such by our electron detectors is not how it is for the underlying reality. Our best current understanding in terms of quantum field theory is that there is a complex electron field (as there is for a proton or any other entity), a unit of its excitation realized as an electron in the detector. The field itself exists over all space and time, these being “mere” markers or parameters for describing the field function and not locations where the electron is at an instant as had been understood ever since Newton.
Along with the electron, nearly all the elementary particles that make up our Universe manifest as particles in the classical limit. Only two, electrically neutral, zero mass bosons (a term used for particles with integer values of spin angular momentum in terms of the fundamental quantum called Planck’s constant) that describe electromagnetism and gravitation are realized as classical electric and magnetic or gravitational fields. The very words particle and wave, as with position and momentum, are meaningful only in the classical limit. The underlying reality itself is indifferent to them even though, as with languages, we have to grasp it in terms of one or the other representation and in this classical limit.
The history of physics may be seen as progressively separating what are incidental markers or parameters used for keeping track through various representations from what is essential to the physics itself. Some of this is immediate; others require more sophisticated understanding that may seem at odds with (classical) common sense and experience. As long as that is kept clearly in mind, many mysteries and paradoxes are dispelled, seen as artifacts of our pushing our models and language too far and “identifying” them with the underlying reality, one in principle out of reach. We hope our models and pictures get progressively better, approaching that underlying reality as an asymptote, but they will never become one with it.
Headline Image credit: Milky Way Rising over Hilo by Bill Shupp. CC-BY-2.0 via shupp Flickr
Sometimes it’s the fly in the ointment, the thing that spoils the purity of the whole picture, which leads to the big advances in science. That’s exactly what happened at a conference in Shelter Island, New York in 1947 when a group of physicists gathered to discuss the latest breakthroughs in their field which seemed at first sight to make everything more complicated.
Isidor Rabi reported experimental results from Columbia University that showed that the g-factor for the electron, a property reflecting its magnetic moment, was not precisely two, as Paul Dirac’s beautiful theory of the electron had predicted, but came out to be a messy 2.00244 (though the modern value is very slightly lower than this). And Willis Lamb, also at Columbia, explained how two energy levels in the hydrogen atom which were supposed (again according to Dirac) to be coincident were very slightly displaced from each other (an effect now known as the Lamb shift).
These were apparently messy, annoying and disruptive results that ruined a pure, dignified and elegant theory. But physicists like a challenge, and the conference attendees included Hans Bethe, Julian Schwinger, and Richard Feynman, all three of whom would attack the problem. The key insight was to realize that there are a multitude of quantum processes that can occur, and which had been forgotten. An electron is not just an electron, but is surrounded by a cloud of virtual particles: photons, electrons, and antielectrons, popping in and out of existence. These higher order processes are most pictorially described by Feynman diagrams, simple cartoons containing dots, arrows and wiggly lines, each one a shorthand for a mathematical term in a complex calculation but summarizing a physical interaction in an elegant form.
These diagrams can be used to show how the basic interaction between electrons and light is altered by quantum processes, an effect which tweaks its magnetic moment. This slightly shifts the “g-factor” and gives a prediction which has been verified experimentally to many decimal places. It also affects the way in which the spin and orbital angular momentum behave and this can be used to explain the Lamb shift. These tiny effects signal a vacuum that is not empty but teeming with quantum life, myriad interactions shimmering around every particle
Feynman diagrams first appeared in print sixty-five years ago this year, so they have now reached statutory retirement age. But rather than being put out to grass, Feynman’s cartoons are still used to make calculations and describe physical processes. They are at the foundation of modern quantum field theory, and if we ever figure out how to make a theory of quantum gravity, it is pretty likely Feynman diagrams will be in the description. It’s a reminder of why detailed measurements are needed in physics. Those little discrepancies can lead to revolutions in understanding.
Tom Lancaster was a Research Fellow in Physics at the University of Oxford, before becoming a Lecturer at the University of Durham in 2012. Stephen J. Blundell is a Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Mansfield College, Oxford. They are co-authors of Quantum Field Theory for the Gifted Amateur.
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Math is on my mind lately as I wrap up the Parallelogram series. (Yes, Dear Readers, Book 4 is coming! There are just so many words.) I, like my main character Audie in the series, enjoy quantum physics but do not enjoy the math. Or, to put it less charitably, cannot do the math.
But I can’t help wondering if I would have had a completely different attitude toward math in school if I’d had a teacher like this. Or at least seen a demonstration like this. Because there’s no doubt Arthur Benjamin makes math FUN. (Although no matter how fun it is, I still think there’s no way mere mortals could do what he does.)
Enjoy!
7 Comments on For Those Of Us Who Think We Don’t Like Math, last added: 5/8/2014
Hi, Jackie. There’s a long answer to this, but there’s also a short one: Fat Robin.
jackie said, on 5/8/2014 10:22:00 AM
I want to know the answer, I enjoyed so much your book that I’m doing a research paper about it and I need to know your inspiration for this book….
Robin said, on 5/8/2014 10:29:00 AM
That really is my answer! I was overweight in high school and college, and when I saw a photo in National Geographic magazine just like the photo Cat chooses in her science class, I got the idea for the whole book. I ended up doing the entire experiment just like Cat does–giving up caffeine, sugar, meat, dairy, processed foods, all of it–and it changed my life! When I finished the book I went back to caffeine and sugar (because both are necessary for writing books), but left out all the rest. Okay, except for processed foods, because I’m human and live in modern times. Good luck on your research paper!
Jackie said, on 5/8/2014 11:04:00 AM
so you see yourself reflected in the story?
Jackie said, on 5/8/2014 12:15:00 PM
so did you actually got any help or information to make your book possible?
On 4 July 2012, scientists at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) facility in Geneva announced the discovery of a new elementary particle they believe is consistent with the long-sought Higgs boson, or ‘god particle’. Our understanding of the fundamental nature of matter — everything in our visible universe and everything we are — is about to take a giant leap forward. So, what is the Higgs boson and why is it so important? What role does it play in the structure of material substance? We’re celebrating the release of Higgs: The Invention and Discovery of the ‘God Particle’ with a series of posts by science writer Jim Baggott over the next week to explain some of the mysteries of the Higgs.
By Jim Baggott
We know that the physical universe is constructed from elementary matter particles (such as electrons and quarks) and the particles that transmit forces between them (such as photons). Matter particles have physical characteristics that we classify as fermions. Force particles are bosons.
In quantum field theory, these particles are represented in terms of invisible energy ‘fields’ that extend through space. Think of your childhood experiences playing with magnets. As you push the north poles of two bar magnets together, you feel the resistance between them grow in strength. This is the result of the interaction of two invisible, but nevertheless very real, magnetic fields. The force of resistance you experience as you push the magnets together is carried by invisible (or ‘virtual’) photons passing between them.
Matter and force particles are then interpreted as fundamental disturbances of these different kinds of fields. We say that these disturbances are the ‘quanta’ of the fields. The electron is the quantum of the electron field. The photon is the quantum of the electromagnetic field, and so on.
In the mid-1960s, quantum field theories were relatively unpopular among theorists. These theories seemed to suggest that force carriers should all be massless particles. This made little sense. Such a conclusion is fine for the photon, which carries the force of electromagnetism and is indeed massless. But it was believed that the carriers of the weak nuclear force, responsible for certain kinds of radioactivity, had to be large, massive particles. Where then did the mass of these particles come from?
In 1964, four research papers appeared proposing a solution. What if, these papers suggested, the universe is pervaded by a different kind of energy field, one that points (it imposes a direction in space) but doesn’t push or pull? Certain kinds of force particle might then interact with this field, thereby gaining mass. Photons would zip through the field, unaffected.
One of these papers, by English theorist Peter Higgs, included a footnote suggesting that such a field could also be expected to have a fundamental disturbance — a quantum of the field. In 1967 Steven Weinberg (and subsequently Abdus Salam) used this mechanism to devise a theory which combined the electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces. Weinberg was able to predict the masses of the carriers of the weak nuclear force: the W and Z bosons. These particles were found at CERN about 16 years later, with masses very close to Weinberg’s original predictions.
By about 1972, the new field was being referred to by most physicists as the Higgs field, and its field quantum was called the Higgs boson. The ‘Higgs mechanism’ became a key ingredient in what was to become known as the standard model of particle physics.
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0 Comments on What is the Higgs boson? as of 9/3/2012 8:43:00 PM
I have 2 out of 4 so I just grabbed the Parallelogram series. Thanks!!
Linh said, on 3/24/2012 9:39:00 AM
Thank you for the links! (: Even though I couldn’t get them.
Anyway, I just entered the giveaway. It’s been three days into it, and there are already 8 pages of entries. 19 days to go. Meh.
*** One They said it couldn’t be done. Well, that’s not exactly true. They said it couldn’t be done by a 17-year-old girl sitting alone in her bedroom on a Saturday morning. Well, that’s not exactly true, either, since it’s not like there’s some physicist out there who specifically made that prediction—“A seventeen-year-old girl in [...]
0 Comments on INTO THE PARALLEL–Sneak preview!! as of 1/1/1900
Here’s a little something for your weekend–some physics, some time travel, a little fish-licking (that part is based on my own dog’s peculiar habit)–give it a try. (The story, not the fish-licking.)
Here’s the link to the story. Use coupon code JR93U to get it for free all weekend long! Enjoy!
Hi, all. If you’re in the mood for some short fiction, you can now read two of my short stories, written last year while I was deep into my quantum physics research for my upcoming trilogy, INTO THE PARALLEL. You can tell my brain was pretty physicsy at the time.
They are:
A SKIP OF THE MIND: A physicist must find a unique solution to the problem of time travel if he wants to save his wife.
GAMEMASTER: They say high school is a game . . . For one girl, it’s a game she’s in charge of. A stroke of a key, an equation, a few changes in molecules and atoms here and there, and suddenly the losers aren’t such outcasts anymore. Nicki isn’t doing it to be noble, she’s doing it for sport. Because she can. But what happens to the people she’s remade? Who’s in charge of them now?
The limited-time TIME TRAVEL STORY BUNDLE is officially on sale for one more week. A lot of you have already bought it, which is great–I hope you’re enjoying the books in there as much as I am! I’ve already ripped through 3, and have 9 more to go (I can skip Parallelogram (Book 1: Into the Parallel) since I wrote it myself and consequently have read it more than anyone else in the world. So far). I love reading about time travel, and these books are such a treat for my brain. I hope you’re all treating your brains to this fabulous book bundle, too.
Jim Baggott is author of 
what event caused the book fat cat?
Hi, Jackie. There’s a long answer to this, but there’s also a short one: Fat Robin.
I want to know the answer, I enjoyed so much your book that I’m doing a research paper about it and I need to know your inspiration for this book….
That really is my answer! I was overweight in high school and college, and when I saw a photo in National Geographic magazine just like the photo Cat chooses in her science class, I got the idea for the whole book. I ended up doing the entire experiment just like Cat does–giving up caffeine, sugar, meat, dairy, processed foods, all of it–and it changed my life! When I finished the book I went back to caffeine and sugar (because both are necessary for writing books), but left out all the rest. Okay, except for processed foods, because I’m human and live in modern times. Good luck on your research paper!
so you see yourself reflected in the story?
so did you actually got any help or information to make your book possible?
That’s all I can say for right now, Jackie, because I’m working on something big and can’t take any more time, but for more information you can read this interview I did with Meg Cabot:http://www.megcabot.com/2010/02/keeper-shelf-monday-fat-cat-by-robin-brande/. That’s it. Good luck!